sanctuary

Thursday, December 14, 2017

People who shut their eyes
to reality simple invite their own destruction, and anyone who
insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that
innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

(James Baldwin)

Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf?
Haven't these subjects been analyzed over the years ad nauseam? Well
yes, but....

The Dublin Review of Books
recently published an essay by Albrecht Koschorke entitled On
Hitler's Mein Kampf: The Poetics of National Socialism.Koschorke
himself almost offers a timid apology for bringing up the subject and
even mentions “Godwin's Law,” which states, according to the
Urban Dictionary, that the longer an online argument goes on and
becomes more and more heated, the more likely someone will bring up
Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The person invoking these names
effectively forfeits the argument..

But Koschorke, a German
literary critic, offers a compelling examination of the subject
because of what he calls the “mounting radicalization” in our own
time.

Here, in the United States
for example, we could draw up a list of worrisome changes that are
taking hold of American society. Some might include:

Politicization of
everyday life

A disregard for the
importance of 'truth”

Devaluing of
intellectual excellence

Knowingly accepting
outright lies from our leaders

Vulgarization of
society in general

Scapegoating,
immigrants for example, and Muslims in particular.

Tribalism

You could argue that many of
these conditions have reared their head in the United States before,
It's true. You could also say that some of these conditions have been
with us from the very beginnings of the country, which Alexis de
Tocqueville, among others, pointed out in the early 19th
century. True enough.

Yet it is also true that
they are collectively growing and spreading across America in 2017
and they are reasons to be concerned if we are at all interested in
equity and a viable democratic republic (recognizing that some people
aren't remotely interested). The intriguing—and important
question—is always why did it happen and why does it continue to
happen.

Koschorke states that it is
important to understand 'the confluence of circumstances” that made
national socialism in Germany possible in the 1930s.

Mein Kampf was published in
1924. Academic readers at the time considered it unoriginal,
ludicrous, poorly written and simply rabid. It is all of these things
and more. In college I managed to get through about 50 pages or so
before tossing it into the wastebasket. The point, however, is that
Hitler's intended audience was never academics. This was not his
constituency.

Koschorke says of the book,
“A menacing vacuum emanates from Mein Kampf—a license for
adherents to react with a 'Just you wait' that bristles with lustful
sadism.” For Koschorke, it is not that most people didn't read Mein
Kampf or finished it, but that those who chose to wade though it
entered into a kind of “secret society.” Perhaps most important
in this closed circle was the nature of power. It was power that was
contemptuous of any engagement with its opponents. Ultimately it was
irrelevant whether one believed in Hitler's “literary” rants or
more important in his far more mesmerizing public ranting and
ravings. His followers knew what they wanted.

But who was Hitler's
constituency according to Koschorke? Well, it wasn't the “scarcely
literate or lower order of society.” For Hitler it was those with
limited education and those who could be called the “failed” or
“faltering.” Koschorke defines Hitler's constituency as those
people who lived in a condition of existence “without
predictability or security,” which in turn affected material or
psychological well being. It was easier as time went by to blame the
Jewish “conspiracy” and the Social Democrats for the failure of
democratic institutions in Germany. By the mid-1930s it mattered
little what anyone thought.

Numerous books have been
written on the the rise of Fascism and Nazism, along with the
assorted dictators that took power in the 1920s and 1930s. But
certainly a loss of confidence in democratic institutions was a
factor, a factor that can be seen spreading across the globe today.

Once you get beyond
nationalism and making “holy mother Russia” great again, it's by
in large a thug state, a kleptocracy. China, supposedly the new
superpower is, as someone once described it, “capitalism in a
Leninist cage.” Dismal as one can imagine. You can today go across
the globe from India and Turkey to right wing nationalism in Europe
and realize that democratic institutions and beliefs are under
assault, exactly what occurred in Europe more than 80 years ago.

Here in the United States
the slow unraveling leading to inequality and authoritarianism has
been going on for a good thirty years. There is no guarantee this
time for a “happy” ending.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Some may remember a Stephen
Schwarzman back in 2010. He was and is the billionaire CEO of perhaps
the largest private equity firm in the country. He became hysterical
over Obama's attempt to make some “very slight” changes to the
carried interest charges. He compared it to “Hitler invading
Poland in 1939.” Just more nonsense from the privileged class.

No, carried interest charges
is not something that most of us need to worry about. It was devised
by and for the very rich, sort of like the tax havens across the
globe that have been in the news lately. It also remains in the “tax
overhaul” plan the Republican cult wants to get passed as fast as
possible this week. Of course, if we actually closed all these
assorted welfare programs for our pampered parasite class we probably
wouldn't have to screw the vast majority of Americans ... or at least
as badly as what might very well happen.

While we have been
distracted by the degenerate, half-bright sociopath in the White
House, the Republican Congress has been crawling frantically through
their own swamp desperate to appease their overseers. After all, they
have been told in no uncertain terms—no 19th century, no
more campaign contributions, from us, the kleptocracy.

No, no, possible collusion
with a foreign power, conflict of interests, failure to disclose
income tax returns, environmental degradation, unqualified nominees,
health and safety, growing inequality, gutting of health insurance,
third world U.S. infrastructure repairs, corporate personhood etc,
etc and etc is not the priority. The Republican Congress is counting
on an electorate unable to tear itself away from the latest
distraction on social media, television and talk radio.

The Republicans will give
the one-percent over one-fifth of the tax cuts, while the top
5-percent will get just under half of the tax cuts. Oh and they will
have to be paid for, not by some fanciful economic expansion or
trickle down nonsense, but by all the rest of us. The holy grail for
the parasite class is of course Social Security and Medicare. But the
millennials have not been forgotten. Well, they actually have, been
forgotten, actually.

There will be no American
dream for the overwhelming majority. For that 40 to 60 year old
group, well, work is good for you. Stay healthy. Don't waste time on
vacations. You may even win the lottery. That's the definition of
Libertarianism: FREEDOM to be unemployed, under educated, sick and
powerless to do anything about it. Oh, and we haven't even talked
about net neutrality. But it's too complicated for most Americans
anyway. The Democratic Party? Well, we don't have time right now.
They're still deciding on who they are.

Oh, speaking of
Libertarians, at least the rich ones. Many of them don't believe in a
lot of the childlike nonsense they yap about. They just don't give a
damn about the “democracy” thing. Regardless, at this point we
have only a fig leaf of a democratic republic anyway. Yeah, I'm
inclined to think we're dealing with treason; we have been betrayed.
Sorry, I forgot to mention the “chained CPI tax hike.” Look it
up.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Many
of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much
time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.

(Norman Maclean, “A
River Runs Through It and Other Stories”)

I returned recently from
Montana and Wyoming, where I hiked in Glacier National Park and
Yellowstone, two national treasures I'd not seen before and which
represents the very best in public policy legislation in the United
States ... at least for the majority of Americans I suspect.

But there was something else
besides the state's natural beauty and its wildlife that caught my
attention, as my son and I drove from Bozeman, Montana to Glacier
National Park near the Canadian border. It was both something seen
and something sensed as we traveled toward our destination. It was to
me the Caucasian myth (my words) of the discovery of America writ
large.

We can thank President
Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century for the
national park system, but we can also begin with the naturalist John
Muir who, in the 1870s, realized that European-Americans (and
others) would likely slaughter all the wildlife and possibly harm the
region's natural beauty in what is now Yellowstone National Park in
Wyoming if an area was not set aside as a “preserve” for every
Americans to enjoy in perpetuity.

This—make no mistake about
it—is a bone of contention for some Americans, especially among
many folks that live in the western states. Even when John Muir
raised the issue more than 150 years ago about setting aside
wilderness for “public” use (I prefer “Public Trust”), a
number of Americans claimed it was, well, sort of un-American. This
manifested itself two years ago when Bundy and his white terrorist
supporters occupied and trashed the Mahleur Bird Sanctuary in Oregon
because the government had “no right” to own the land.

The state of Montana is
breath taking in its natural landscape and sheer immensity. It is the
4th largest state in terms of square miles. At the same
time, with approximately one million people, it is the 44th
most populous state. (Wyoming is the second most sparsely populated
state). Montana is also the least “black” state in the country.

It is as well the home of
the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, some 1.5 million acres located east
of Glacier National Park. Montana contains a number of Indian
reservations, including the Crow, the Cheyenne, as well as the Little
Big Horn Battlefield where General Armstrong Custer, an example of
military incompetence and arrogance, met his fate.

Bozeman, Montana, a college
town, has a population of some 45,000 people, It is the fourth
largest city in the state, upscale, prosperous, diverse—and it's
“blue,” at least compared to the very, very conservative state
that surrounds it, a not unfamiliar picture in much of what we call
“red state” America, the stereotypical city-rural divide and
growing wider.

It is when you leave a place
like Bozeman that you begin to sense a very different world and
perhaps a different time. It is a land of few people but vast space
along with a great many cattle, Black Angus being a breed that I saw
a lot of. Supposedly there are three head of cattle for every human
in

Montana.

There is also poverty, a lot
of it from what I could tell. Not the 19th century “sod
buster's” house or the lonely log cabin but a small, rusty looking
trailer parked on the side of a hill and perhaps a couple of
“ne'er-do-well” vehicles near by. I suspect opiod addiction has
also struck rural Montana hard. We passed one broken down shed along
the side of the road where on the roof was the word “OPIOD.” On
the other side of the roof, which you could see coming from the
opposite direction, was the word “DO NOT.”

You
see this man? His name is One Stab. He's a venerated elder of the
Cree nation. He's counted coup in hundreds of his enemies. He is our
friend, and he is thirsty.

(Tristen, in the movie
“Legends of the Fall”)

We unmelanated *
Americans have been fortunate, in the sense that the United States
has not been occupied since the war of 1812 and then only briefly. We
have never really been forced to question our essential beliefs, our
history or the myths that have guided us for so long. This has now,
however, in the present day, become a festering sore that won't go
away anytime soon.

The actual Caucasian history
of the United States is a story of European genocide, slavery and
predatory capitalism. Possibly it was destined to implode all along,
at some point. It obviously did not begin with cowboys in Montana,
nor the likes of Richard Spencer, a “white” nationalist and
apologist for neo-nazis, who happens to be from Montana, a state with
perhaps the largest known number of militia groups in the country.

As good a beginning as any
would be Christopher Columbus, the European who had the blessing of
the Spanish court. We learned in grade school that “Columbus sailed
the ocean blue in 1492.” He actually landed in Hispaniola in what
is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Columbus met the Taino
people in Hispaniola and was impressed by their peacefulness and
generosity. But in letters to the king and queen of Spain he remarked
about how easy it would be the make them all slaves. “With fifty
men, we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want,”
Columbus informed the Spanish court.

Less one think that this
attitude was universal at the time, the Chinese in 1405, almost a
hundred years before, with an immense armada and traveling in ships
far larger than anything the Europeans possessed, began their
exploration that lasted some three decades, spanning areas in Africa,
the Indian ocean and Southeast Asia.

China did not leave behind
the predation, destruction and genocidal intent like the Europeans
did. The question is why? This is a story unto itself, but one well
worth thinking about, especially in this day and age. For a good
beginning read The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History for
Humanity's Search for Meaning by Jeremy Lent. The rest is
as they say European history and later European-American history.

The earth is the mother
of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.

(Chief Joseph, 1879)

The recent Las Vegas
shooting where some 59 people were murdered was horrible and the most
recent mass gun atrocity in the United States. It has been called
the worst mass shooting in American history. It is not by any means,
but it says a great deal about our collective historical amnesia and
historical literacy.

A few examples: In 1864 the
U.S. Cavalry massacred over 500 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who were
living on their own land in Colorado. In 1873 at least 150
African-Americans were murdered by white supremacists in Colfax,
Louisiana. In 1890 300 Lakota Indians were murdered by the U.S. 7th
cavalry at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. There are more examples,
including those massacres that occurred in the 20th
century.

The winning of the West, as
I have written about before, is one of the greatest unmelanated fairy
tales we have. The reality is not all about some
goofy“libertarianism,” subduing empty spaces, respecting the
land, the wildlife and, oh yeah, the native folks. It is not about
doing “without government” or the endless tales of “little
house” on the prairie and the survival of all those devout
immigrants arriving from Scandinavia. What is most often left out in
the usual and insipid Chamber of Commerce speeches is the actual
uncensored truth.

Once
more:

I see
in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country.... Corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow....

(President Abraham
Lincoln, 1864)

All eyes turned westward at
the end of the Civil War. Time to get rich, save souls and civilize
the West. Certainly, an especially egregious brand of Christian
evangelism proclaimed that “their book” told then they had
dominion over damn near everything, which included the land, the
wildlife and of course the “savages.”

What was called the Gilded
Age was the beginning of government and corporate collusion on a
massive scale. It was about scratching each others back, getting rich
any way one could and where the ends always justified the means and
where nothing was especially sacred except making more money.

It was an era of
imperialism, white supremacy, racism, and the collapse of promises of
equality after the Civil War. It was about the deliberate removal and
murder of the Indians; it was about the slaughter of wildlife; it
was about the disrespect and destruction of the land. It set the
stage for the twentieth and twenty-first century and where we have
arrived at the present time.

For anyone interested in a
detailed account of the age, Railroaded by the historian
Richard White is excellent. It is full of facts about the part the
railroad played in shaping the West for both good and for bad. It
also discusses the cattle barons and the depth of corruption and
thuggery they wallowed in and how they still have considerable
influence today.

Another excellent book,
perhaps less academic than White's book, is Age
of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money
in America, 1865-1900 by
Jack Beatty. To know and understand America today it's
important to understand the history of the late 19th
century.

Who currently resides in the
White House is for me a national disgrace and represents a seriously
dysfunctional country. The president's cabinet with few exceptions
are a collection of rich mediocrities and political hacks, including
Ryan Zinke the Interior Secretary (now under investigation) and
former congressman from Montana. He is no true friend of national
parks and wildlife. But so much is at stake and so much to protect
and preserve ... text book conservatism I know. Forget your self
pity, depression and disillusionment.

In my ideal world I would
like to see more land in many western states set aside as national
preserves. Sure, I would be happy to have the livestock industry
shrink considerably, both for the sake of the environment and the
animals being killed, domestic and well as those in the wild. For
that matter, I would like to see the Second Amendment amended in
order to reflect the reality of the 21st century, not the
18th. Oh yes, if Montana gets two senators why can't
California get maybe four senators. The difference between 1 million
and 39 million is a lot. Yet, what would be the consequences for a
state like Montana?

No, the above is not going
to happen anytime soon and that is why we have to work with the
reality we currently have for the benefit of all of us—like it or
not.

Sell a
country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?

(Tecumseh, 1768-1813)

While in Bozeman I bought a
book entitled Conservation Heroes of
the American Heartland: Rancher, Farmer,
Fisherman, by Miriam Horn. It tells the story of five
individuals in different parts of the United States, including a
rancher near Choteau, Montana where Glacier National Park is located,
who have made a commitment to preserve a way of life yet intend to
respect and protect an environment challenged by a twenty-first
century world.

These are stories about
people willing to engage in different points of view, sometimes
radically different. It's about a willingness to listen, to learn
how to preserve as well as how to live in a rapidly changing world
and ultimately have the patience to gather people in small groups to
find common ground. No one is claiming it is remotely easy but it is
the one thing we all must do.

This is the lesson: We can
not wait for some “other” to do it. We can not just “hope” it
will get better. It is not as exciting as waving a banner or shouting
out slogans. It requires that we ourselves become thoroughly informed
or know where to go when we aren't.

Finally, while knowing the
past is critical, dwelling in it will keep us there forever. This is
the lesson. I want my children and my grandchildren to blink several
times when they stare up at the mountain, watch a pack of wolves
saunter across the land or see a grizzly stand up on its hind
legs....

We
reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in
her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was
something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and
to the mountains.

(Thinking Like a Mountain,
by Aldo Leopold)

*NOTE: The word
“unmelanated” is not mine, I came across it in an essay by
Michael Harriot, a writer for the online magazine The Root. I wish I
could say that I had invented it. Melanin is of course dark brown to
black pigment occurring in the hair, skin and iris.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

What is most important for
democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great
fortunes should not remain in the same hands, In that way there are
rich men, but they do not form a class.

(Alexis de Tocqueville,
author of Democracy in America, 1835)

2016

I can't say I'm unhappy
about seeing the end of 2016 even though 2017 holds promises of being
much worse. In October of 2016 my dearest friend was murdered in her
home. It was brutal and violent and has changed my life forever.

In December of 2016 I was
diagnosed with moderate osteoarthritis in my right knee, hardly earth
shaking, uncommon nor remotely unexpected. It has, however, become a
permanent and irritating reminder of my physical self. But
“irritating” is the operating word, not chronic, debilitating
pain that can control a person's life in so many ways.

Increasing the pain in
America

Angus Deaton, the 2015
winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, published a study along with
his wife Anne Case, about a segment of white America, which has
proven to be eye opening and startling in its conclusions.

The two economists analyzed
various information on working class whites, 45 to 54 years of age,
with less than a college education. They discovered a 22% rise in
death rates from 1999 to 2013, largely due to alcohol, drug abuse and
suicide. (See white America). Deaton and Case concluded that this was
a community engulfed by pain, which is both chronic and persistent
physical and emotional pain. The researchers have suggested that
possibly one-half million people are dead who should not be.

A people's dream died at
the Battle of Wounded Knee.

(Black Elk, Lakota holy
man)

A pain perspective

Frantz Fanon, the French
psychiatrist, achieved near cult status in the 1960s among the global
Left. Fanon, the author of Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched
of the Earth, explored the relationship between racism, colonialism,
mental illness and freedom while serving as a psychiatrist during the
Algerian War of Independence against France. Fanon himself was born
in the Caribbean island of Martinique to descendants of free black
cocoa farmers.

Frantz Fanon was most
interested in the psychological injuries, particularly the “shame
and self contempt” it spreads among its victims. He also noted that
both the oppressed and the oppressors were locked together and the
chains could not be broken until those that were oppressed chose to
struggle for their own independence.

Today, the American
Psychological Association states that “pain has biological,
psychological and emotional factors.” It is not purely a physical
sensation. We know now that chronic pain can certainly cause feelings
such as hopelessness, sadness, anxiety and most definitely anger.

An American dystopia

No, the death rates in
general among African-Americans is still greater than rates for white
Americans, but for a particular segment of white America—in the
millions—there is a backward trend, unlike any other group in the
developed world at the present time. It likely began in the early
1980s.

Yes, it is an oftentimes
unspoken belief and feeling that this is the group that has provided
the racist ground troops, the neo-Nazis, the xenophobia and the
bottomless ignorance that has allowed the American kleptocracy to
manipulate and exploit the so called white working class.

After all, wasn't it “Johnny
Reb” in 1860, barefoot and penniless, that marched off to defend a
vile, racist plantocracy? And yes, is this not the group that is
about to put Donald Trump in the White House?

Of course the element of
truth is there. But the pain, physical and psychological is real. And
who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor? Can it sometimes be
one and the same?

The painful cause

The truth may not always set
you free but it has always been visible if you are ever so willing to
actually study your surroundings. Frantz Fanon was right. It really
is a matter of the oppressed finally deciding to be free.

Right now a significant
percentage of the rich and the powerful in the United States is
gleefully ready to gut American health care (among so many other
things), which includes critically important mental health services.
No one will be arriving in the nick of time to save us.

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About Me

"We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes--something known only to her and to the mountains." (Aldo Leopold, "Thinking Like a Mountain")
"We are the rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it." (Frederick Townsend Martin, 19th century plutocrat)